


An Eye for an Eye

by Delphi



Series: Love Is Blind [3]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Aftermath, Comfort, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-17
Updated: 2006-08-17
Packaged: 2017-10-04 23:38:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus seeks comfort in the wake of the Shrieking Shack "prank." Follows <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/35329">In the Eye of the Beholder</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Eye for an Eye

**Author's Note:**

> Posted for (but not written expressly for) the Pornish_Pixies community on LJ. Challenge: _Sexual Healing_

They kept him in the infirmary overnight. For his own good, they said, but Severus knew they were really just afraid of what he would do if they let him go. Madam Pomfrey mixed him a Calming Draught and made him drink it even though he had already stopped shouting. She took his pulse, tipped the bitter brew down his throat, then took his pulse again. The potion spread through his insides like warm syrup, leaving him too weak to protest when the headmaster took his wand away. As though he were a child—as though he were the criminal here.

He turned his face to the wall, listening to the pounding in his head and nodding when he thought he should until Dumbledore went away. Then he closed his eyes and burrowed deep under the blankets.

Voices huddled together outside the door, a hundred miles away. He heard his name, then the headmaster murmuring: "...very disappointed in you, Mr. Black..."

_"You remember how to get in, don't you, Peter? Just press the knot on the trunk."_

Time passed. He dreamed of home, dark and cold. Of whispers in the woods, of being chased.

"Argus, really now..."

Severus stirred. Madam Pomfrey sounded exasperated, and the curtains rustled. Lamplight burned as he stared at the hazy red underside of his eyelids.

Mr. Filch was cursing, low and quiet, sounding more angry than Severus had ever heard him. He groaned inwardly—Hell's bells, the last thing he needed was to catch trouble for sneaking out after dark. He had to wake up, had to explain that it wasn't his fault.

_"Werewolf—for God's sake, Snape, run!"_

It wasn't his fault. They'd tried to kill him

The bed tilted as someone sat down beside him. He fought to open his eyes, struggling against the blankets.

"Shh."

A hand came to rest upon his brow, the edge of a sleeve rubbing against his cheek. He knew that smell, dust and cat hair and cleaning potions. He tried to move his leaden tongue, tried to explain what had happened—Potter and Black, and the Whomping Willow, and the _werewolf_—but nothing would come out. For a moment he couldn't even breathe, sinking down into a fathomless pool, his ears and mouth filling up with water.

Then the warm touch moved to his cheek, a gentle pressure turning small circles on his temple, making the red glare fade to black. He breathed.

It was morning before he surfaced again, waking to open bed-curtains and sunlight burning his eyes. He ached all over; he'd slept wrong and the back of his neck was one giant knot.

"Mr. Snape?"

Severus looked up blearily, startled by the matron's blandly kind face looming over him.

"Will you be going to breakfast?" she asked.

The events of last night came back to him then, not in one great rush but with terrible slowness, unfolding one moment after the other. He slowly shook his head. No, he would not be going to breakfast.

He cleared his throat, feeling as though he'd quaffed a Scouring Spirit. "I...I think I'd like to go back to my dormitory."

She nodded, and for a moment he saw pity in her eyes. His hand clenched beneath the covers. Then she laid his folded robes on the bed and they clenched even tighter, his face burning red in mortification as he realised she had undressed him.

He yanked the curtains shut to dress, still unsteady on his feet as he wrestled into his robes, and he found a glass of pumpkin juice and an apple waiting for him when he emerged. He washed his face in the basin while Madam Pomfrey took stock of the cupboards. His robes had been laundered, but his boots were still caked with dried mud. The bruises on his legs from where he'd fallen had faded, as had the scrapes on his hands, but the hurt of them lingered beneath the skin.

He knocked back the pumpkin juice and pocketed the apple, sidling towards the door.

"Mind you go straight there," Madam Pomfrey said, and then she paused, adding less briskly, "And come back here if you feel poorly."

Right. He went out into the corridor, finding it blessedly empty. A glance at the clock found it still breakfast time, everyone in the Great Hall, and he wondered if that was why Madam Pomfrey had woken him when she had. He looked up and down the endless row of doors. All was quiet, even the portraits and ghosts seeming to give him wide berth. He couldn't go back to the dormitory, obviously. Not now, maybe not ever.

His feet started up on their own, left, then right—he hesitated at the top of the stairs leading to the dungeons—then kept on down the long, narrow hallway that branched off to the north wing. There was nothing this way but unused classrooms and a few storage cupboards. And, nestled on the right in a small alcove, one unremarkable door.

Severus paused, continued a few steps down the hallway, then doubled back. He jammed his hands into his pockets, pacing in indecision as his mind struggled in the fog of his dosing. His stomach gnawed at itself.

He finally reached for the doorknob, the cold metal stinging his hand, and tried not to sag in relief when it turned.

The door swung open to dimness and warmth, and Severus gave a small start as the cat darted out between his feet. He scowled, turning the deadbolt behind him once he was inside and leaning back against the door until his heartbeat slowed. The lights were out, but a little morning sun sneaked in around the edges of the boarded-up windows. He toed off his boots and crept forward, peering at the bed.

Mr. Filch lay stretched out and snoring in the middle of his morning nap, face down and fully dressed on top of the covers. There was a narrow space beside him, and for a moment Severus wanted nothing more than to tuck himself into it, to bury his face in the pillow and pretend that the whole of last night had never happened.

Despite those Gryffindors' best efforts, however, he still had his dignity.

He hovered beside the bed for a moment, watching Mr. Filch's back steadily rise and fall, then slunk across the room to the beaten-up old armchair, nudging picture frames and paper-work crooked along the way and snagging a half-full bottle of brandywine from atop the table. The leather creaked as he sank down in the chair. Mr. Filch snuffled in his sleep, stirring but not waking. Severus stared tiredly at him, uncorking the bottle and forcing down a fiery swallow. He pulled a face at the taste, but the second swig numbed it.

He could run away. If he walked off the grounds right now, he could be out past the village before anyone noticed, if they would notice at all. If he took a broom from the sheds, he could be out of Scotland before sundown, with a letter sent off to someone—anyone in the Ministry who wasn't in Dumbledore's pocket—letting them know every fucking atrocity that went on in this place.

A third drink burned its way down. Where would he go? Not home, that was for certain. Between his mother and grandfather, he would be hard pressed to say which would send him back and which would kill him. To Edinburgh? London? Britain was far too small a place for a wizard who wanted to disappear. And even if he found somewhere to go, what would he do there with not a NEWT or Knut to his name?

His gaze drifted down to the loose floorboard under the bed. There was a lock box in the dusty space beneath, shut only with the paltriest of charms and filled halfway with a small miser's hoard in silver and gold. Mr. Filch didn't know he knew about it. He considered this for several moments and several more sips from the bottle before concluding that he would have less compunction about stealing it were he not disquietingly certain that Mr. Filch would give him as much as he wanted if he only asked right.

Besides, he consoled himself, thievery was a disgustingly common crime.

He swallowed over a hard lump in his throat as the wind howled, raising gooseflesh all down his arms. The light around the window had turned grey, the morning slowly clouding over. He could feel a headache coming on along with the rain, or perhaps it would be the first snowfall of the year. He pulled the afghan off the back of the chair with a flash of anger at his own jumpiness and clumsily wrapped himself up against the sudden chill. This wasn't travelling weather anyhow.

Minutes slipped away in hopeless thought, and the bottle began to grow distressingly light. He tipped the last drops from it before letting it slip from his fingers. It hit the rug with a loud thump, bringing Mr. Filch bolting upright with a sputter that would have been comical if Severus hadn't nearly leapt out of his skin too.

The man spun to look at him, wild-eyed, half a shout out of his mouth before he seemed to realise who Severus was. He subsided with a sigh. "Up and about, then?" His voice was sleep-worn and hoarse.

Severus frowned as he realised that he, rather than the room, had slowly tilted sideways. Mr. Filch got to his feet, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he approached to peer at him.

"Am I going to get scratched?" he asked, his hand pausing halfway to where the blanket flopped down over Severus's face like a cowl.

When Severus didn't respond, he reached forward and twitched a corner away. He stared for a moment, and Severus supposed his face was blotchy, but he didn't care. He thought Mr. Filch's eyes went a little soft.

"Christ," Mr. Filch said, his gaze dropping. "You look twelve like that. Sit up."

Severus did, reluctantly, and found he could breathe a little better despite his spinning head.

Mr. Filch's back made an unpleasant popping sound as he bent down to retrieve the bottle. His lips pursed, but he said nothing, and the rage welled up in Severus's throat until he choked on it.

"Did you _know_?"

He was met with nothing but bafflement for a long moment. Then the cogs seemed to turn sleepily in Mr. Filch's head, and a bitter frown crumpled the man's face.

"I'll have that half-wit Hagrid's job for this, you mark my words. A stray werewolf running loose in the woods, and what in God's name do they pay the idiot for if not..."

Severus tuned out his ranting but let himself be enveloped by the growling indignation of it, closing his eyes for a moment to savour it. He didn't bother to tell him the truth, if only because he feared his voice might quaver; it could wait until Lupin was formally expelled.

"Are they going to be punished?" he cut in.

Mr. Filch paused, and Severus could all but hear his thoughts stopping in their tracks and changing direction. "Them that dragged you out there? Should be given up to the Dementors if you ask me."

But no one was going to ask him, Severus realised darkly. Who gave a bloody fuck what a stupid old Squib thought, a nobody from a nobody family who scrubbed toilets for the Potters and Blacks of the world. You could work as hard as you liked and that's all it would ever come down to: names and bloodlines and whose rich, syphilitic loins you had dropped from. He knew that now.

Severus flinched when the man tried to touch him, turning away with hopeless anger. "Don't you dare touch me—I _hate_ you!"

He wanted to pull the words back when Mr. Filch froze. As Severus watched, his mouth opened, then closed into a thin, grim line. There was something morbidly satisfied in those eyes, and he realised, sick to his stomach, that there might just be some things that Mr. Filch would not put up with.

The prospect of being turned out, here and now, was too terrible to even contemplate. He wanted to apologise, but it stuck in his throat, and instead he blurted out: "I hate _them_."

He pushed himself dizzily to his feet and stomped over to the bed, throwing himself onto the mattress with a groan. He rubbed his cheek against the covers, adding in a frustrated mutter, "I don't—I don't—I hate _them_."

It was a terribly long moment before the footsteps followed and he felt a tentative pat on his back. "Which ones was it that did it?"

Severus didn't need any clarification. "Potter," he said, "and Black." They tasted like curses on his lips.

Mr. Filch sat down beside him, and he flashed upon a hazy memory of last night's small hours. Warmth, and a low voice assuring him it would be all right, that he was a brave lad.

"Mph, figures," Mr. Filch said. "Got a file an inch thick on each, no good snot-nosed brats. The pair of them will meet a sticky end, just see if they don't."

Severus moved infinitesimally closer to him, trying very hard not to think of the end he had nearly met last night. Mr. Filch, at least, knew the way of things, the only one in this wretched place who didn't bend over backwards to lick the Gryffindors' arses. Rather by habit, Severus began stroking his thigh, back and forth, the firm feel of it familiar beneath those worn trousers. It was comforting, like petting an animal—one that petted back in a roundabout way, a hand tangling in his hair, rubbing behind his ear and gently scratching his scalp.

"You just come to steal my liquor, or d'you want a tumble too?"

"Liquor," Severus said sourly.

He didn't want to be fucked. He didn't think he could stand it right now, that feeling of being stripped down and spread open and turned all inside out. Even the thought of a hot, wet suck made his head spin. The hand in his hair felt so good though, and a particular squeeze to the back of his neck seemed to slide slowly down his spine. Mr. Filch had the nicest hands sometimes.

"Well," he said, moving his hand up into Mr. Filch's lap. "Maybe just a bit."

"A bit?" Mr. Filch's voice snagged in the middle.

Severus rubbed at the rough wool, feeling the telltale twitch of something stirring underneath. "Bit of a tumble," he murmured absently as a fingertip traced around the shell of his ear. His blood pulsed slowly through his body, making him feel warm and heavy.

"Worried me sick, you did," Mr. Filch said quietly as he gently nudged him onto his back.

Severus was strangely comforted, as dry lips and a rough cheek brushed against his own, that someone would be sorry he was dead, even if it was only the caretaker. He wondered if Mr. Filch might kill himself, or at least drink himself into an early grave from the sorrow of it.

Another kiss followed, deeper this time, then another. He shivered as his robes were unbuttoned; he stared up at the ceiling as his drawers were eased down.

_"Who wants to see me take off Snivelly's pants?"_

He winced, but a gentle hand stroked him smoothly, and Mr. Filch made that noise he always did. Something like a sigh, like he was saying 'oh' with the most hopeless sort of look on his face. Severus slowly uncoiled, save for the tension curling up in his belly, as every inch of him was uncovered and touched.

He closed his eyes. The clock on the mantle ticked steadily on as Mr. Filch covered him up, kissing him softly, more softly than usual, though his hands were twice as rough. It seemed to take forever to get stiff; he squirmed in frustration, but the hands on him were insistent, and Mr. Filch murmured in his ear with that rough, dirty voice of his: "Lovely little beast...there we go..."

The heat welled up in him, and he finally reached for Mr. Filch's belt, his fingers clumsy as he tried to pull it loose. He gave up and got his shirt half-open instead. Hands folded on top of his own, helping them with the buttons, pushing them down, hot skin, burning, heavy on top of him and pressing the air from his chest as he wriggled.

"Mind the edge—"

It wasn't until his arm was firmly caught that Severus realised he'd nearly rolled off the bed. For a moment everything turned upside-down, the brandywine sloshing around in his head until he didn't know which way was which.

"Let's keep you safe, eh?" Mr. Filch said softly, pulling Severus on top of him. Up was an arm tight against his back and cool air against his skin. Down was woolly and whiskery and warm.

Severus squirmed and rested his face in the crook of Mr. Filch's shoulder. He rocked his hips a little, swallowing a moan at the rough rasp. A hand squeezed in to give him a rub. Long, firm strokes—his hips gave up and went with it, the familiar tug and twist winding him up in pleasure and tension until he couldn't think any longer. A susurrant rush filled his ears, his breath shuddering as his spending was pulled from him with a relentless grip.

His eyes squeezed tightly shut as he groaned, biting his lip as he shivered through it, Mr. Filch crooning low in his ear. He sagged. Lying limp, he felt a pat on his back and heard a dim scuffle as Mr. Filch rooted about for something with which to clean off his hand.

He couldn't move, his limbs weak. All of the energy he'd put towards fighting off the drug and the liquor had suddenly gone out of him, the rage and the fear and the frustration worn down to cold misery. His breathing slowed, and a long, silent spell stretched on so long that he had begun to think Mr. Filch had fallen asleep when the hand on his back gave another tap and the chest beneath him rumbled.

"You'll show 'em."

Severus opened his eyes in query but couldn't quite raise his head.

"You'll show 'em," Mr. Filch repeated, a quiet conviction in his voice. "When they're polishing boots in the Department of Bloody Waste of Spaces, married to their sisters or the first bit of skirt they nearly make a bastard with. You'll be a right somebody, too good to even spit on the little ponces."

The faintest hope flickered inside Severus's chest as his makeshift mattress moved and the quilt was spread over him. Mr. Filch softly stroked his cheek, stroked his hair, rubbed the back of his neck until sleep lapped up at him. Severus closed his eyes once more and mouthed a silent 'yes.'

He would show them.


End file.
